Tampa Tribune / Tampa Bay Online

“You are going to see so much promotion of 4K this year, and prices are dropping from a year ago,” said Barbara Kraus, director of research for the technology consulting firm Parks Associates. Compared to about 800,000 sales of 4K TVs in 2014, Kraus is projecting 2.5 million in 2015, and upward from there. “But they'll still have the issue of a lack of content. Because there's not much content out there, people are likely to say, 'I guess I'll buy this when I'm ready for a new T ...read more

Amazon is getting into every business concept on Earth. Not just dry goods online, but fresh grocery delivery in more markets. It's on a tear signing up people for Prime memberships, and I just spotted one astounding data point from Parks Associates. Fully 20 percent of people in America with a broadband connection have signed up to use the Amazon streaming media app on their TVs, computers or tablets. That's insane! From zero a couple years ago, Jeff Bezos now has a direct conn ...read more

The research firm Parks Associates recently found Amazon making “significant gains” in the TV streaming market, as “nearly 20 percent of all U.S. broadband households now have an Amazon Prime Instant Video subscription.” That marked an average growth rate of 55 percent.

Such services are competing directly with the cable providers for viewers, although those cable providers are often the companies providing the broadband connection into the home that’s needed by Netflix, Hul ...read more

Last year, Bright House started offering several dozen live channels on tablets — including A&E, Discovery, Lifetime, CNN and the Disney Channel — a system that also only works inside the customer's home.Now the system has more than 200 channels available.

Though tablets have been on the market for only the past few years, already 9 percent of people are watching shows on tablets, according to data from market researcher Parks Associates.

Content companies such as Disney ...read more

Verizon will soon start selling a Home Monitoring Control service, and Bright House will soon start selling a more premium home-monitoring and security service, staffed and connected to police and fire departments. "The more services they can get someone to sign up for, the stickier that customer is to them," said Bill Ablondi, director of home systems research for the Parks Associates market research firm. Having a phone company take over home automation makes some sense, he sa ...read more

"It's not necessarily the easiest thing to see how many gigabytes you've used," said Kurt Scherf, principal analyst with the Parks Associates research firm, who believes capped plans will become commonplace in two years.

From the article, "Your broadband provider may start pay-as-you-go-pricing" by Richard Mullins

"Unless you are just swamped with everything else in your life, you probably don't wait more than a week to watch your recorded shows," said Kurt Scherf, vice president of the media and technology research firm Parks Associates. "Granted, I still have a pile of 'My Name Is Earl' shows on my DVR that I haven't gotten to in weeks."

From the article, "DVR Fallout: More People Delaying Season Premiere Watching" by Richard Mullins

A recent study found 17 percent of U.S. households watch TV episodes on a home computer and 8 percent hooked a PC directly to a TV to watch shows on a bigger screen, according to Parks Associates, a technology research company. Most people said they wanted to watch shows free or avoid ads.

Growing broadband use helps the trend along, and 83 million American households already have broadband, according to Parks Associates.

From the article, "Internet may provide cheap altern ...read more